13TH ANNUAL REGIONAL HIGH SCHOOL JURIED ART EXHIBITION AT SAINT ROSE

ALBANY (January 5, 2012) -- The Esther Massry Gallery at The College of Saint Rose presents the “13th Annual Regional High School Juried Art Exhibition.”

The exhibit features artworks by more than 100 students from more than 19 school districts and juried by members of the Saint Rose art faculty. School districts may include Albany City, Albany Academies, Amsterdam, Averill Park, Bethlehem, Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake, Cairo-Durham, Emma Willard, Guilderland, Ichabod Crane, Maple Hill, Mohonasen, Niskayuna, Schenectady, Shaker, Shenendehowa, South Colonie and others.

The exhibit opens Wednesday, February 15, and continues through Thursday, March 15, at the Esther Massry Gallery, Massry Center for the Arts, 1002 Madison Ave., Albany. Gallery hours: Monday-Thursday 10 a.m.-8 p.m., Friday 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Sunday noon-4 p.m. The gallery will be open for 1st Friday, March 2, from 5 p.m. until 9 p.m. and closed March 4-11 (spring break).

A gallery reception will be held Friday, March 2, from 5 p.m. until 7 p.m. A keynote address by Tim Rollins and K.O.S. and awards will follow at 7 p.m. in the Saint Joseph Hall Auditorium, 985 Madison Ave., Albany. Both events are free and open to the public.

Additional Events:Tim Rollins and K.O.S.

Lecture: Thursday, March 1, 7 p.m., Saint Joseph Hall Auditorium, 985 Madison Ave., Albanyfree and open to the public

Master Class: Friday, March 2, Brubacher Hallclosed to the public

Tim Rollins and K.O.S. will conduct a master class involving Albany, Schenectady and Troy school districts as part of the 10-year, worldwide project “The River,” which is based on Duke Ellington’s score. Selected works from the master class will be shown in the Massry Center atrium gallery during the high school exhibition.

Artist, activist, and teacher Tim Rollins and K.O.S. (Kids of Survival) was established in 1985. K.O.S. is a group of artists originally comprised of Rollins' students from Intermediate School 52 in the South Bronx. Rollins and his students are known for their large-scale works of art, created on a grid of book pages laid over canvas. Together, they have developed a collaborative strategy that combines lessons in reading, writing and music interpretation with the production of works of art. Sources have included William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Stephen Crane’s “The Red Badge of Courage” and Jules Verne’s “From the Earth to the Moon.” The group has gone on to exhibit in professional galleries and museums worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art. Today there are active K.O.S. members in Philadelphia, Memphis, San Francisco, Seattle, and New York.

According to Rollins, "What we're doing changes people's conception about who can make art, how art is made, who can learn and what's possible, because a lot of these kids had been written off by the school system. This is our revenge."

Tim Rollins and K.O.S. held a retrospective exhibition at the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, in 2009 and the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. The 272-page book, Tim Rollins and KOS: A History, edited by Ian Berry, associate director and curator, was published by MIT Press in conjunction with the exhibition. The 1996 documentary video, Kids of Survival: The Art and Life of Tim Rollins + KOS, produced and directed by Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller, won two Emmy awards.